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Anomaly cluster 91 EP

Pleiades

RA 56.8692° · Dec 24.1053° · openngc

Real photograph of Pleiades 📷 Real photo
NASA, ESA, AURA/Caltech, Palomar Observatory
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Score breakdown

· 9 badges
91 pts · Anomaly
Anomaly 120 pts → Mythic
  • The Pleiades (the Seven Sisters) +26
  • Bright enough for the unaided eye +14
  • Messier object +12
  • Bigger on the sky than the full Moon +12
  • Has a proper name +8
  • Star cluster +7
  • Bright deep-sky object +6
  • Open cluster +3
  • On the zodiac +3
Total score 91

29 more points to reach Mythic.

Badges

  • Star cluster · +7
  • Messier object · +12
  • Bright deep-sky object · +6
  • Has a proper name · +8
  • Open cluster · +3
  • On the zodiac · +3
  • Bigger on the sky than the full Moon · +12
  • Bright enough for the unaided eye · +14
  • The Pleiades (the Seven Sisters) · +26

Trivia

Hard to believe

  • Messier object. One of the 110 showpieces of the Messier list — catalogued as M45.

What it actually is

  • What it actually is. An open cluster: a few hundred stars born together out of one collapsing cloud, still drifting along in loose formation.

Sense of scale

  • In perspective. Far away by human standards, yet still a local address inside the Milky Way's spiral arms.
  • Sense of scale. Gravity is not strong enough to hold it. Within a few hundred million years these siblings will be scattered right around the galaxy.

Find it in the sky

  • How to spot it. At magnitude 1.2 you can see it with your own eyes from a dark site, over in Taurus.
  • Northern sky. It rides the northern half of the sky — an easier target the further north you are.
  • Best time of year. It stands highest in the middle of the night around November — that's when to go looking.

Could we get there?

  • Verdict. Hopelessly far for any craft humanity can build today.

Properties

constellation
Tau
dist ly
442.906
dso type
OCl
mag
1.2
messier
yes
messier number
045
name
Pleiades
named
yes
radial velocity kms
7
redshift
0
size arcmin
150

About Pleiades

Pleiades is an anomaly cluster. It lies about 442.9 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Tau and shines at apparent magnitude 1.2.

An open cluster: a few hundred stars born together out of one collapsing cloud, still drifting along in loose formation.

How to see it

Look for Pleiades in the constellation Tau. At apparent magnitude 1.2, it can be glimpsed with the unaided eye under dark skies.

Like any astronomical target, Pleiades is best seen from a dark site away from city lights, and when it is above the horizon depends on your latitude and the time of year. The visibility panel above works out tonight's viewing window for your saved location.

Why Pleiades is an anomaly cluster

Pleiades scores 91 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the anomaly tier. Another 29 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 9 science badges — Star cluster, Messier object, Bright deep-sky object, Has a proper name, Open cluster, On the zodiac, Bigger on the sky than the full Moon and Bright enough for the unaided eye — each earned for a real, measurable property of the object. Rarity on Spacedle is never random: the more remarkable an object's astrophysics, the more badges it collects, the higher it scores, and the rarer it ranks.